


This Photograph is Proof (I Know You Know)

by fruitstripegum



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Accidental overdose, F/M, M/M, Overdose, Past Kent Parson/Jack Zimmermann, Rebuilding a life, parse positivity
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-23
Updated: 2019-09-09
Packaged: 2020-07-11 17:41:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 11,887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19931941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fruitstripegum/pseuds/fruitstripegum
Summary: The night before the 2009 NHL Draft, Kent overdoses. He wakes in the hospital and has to figure out what comes next.





	1. Chapter 1

He’s seventeen.

He’s seventeen and he’s on top of the world.

He’s seventeen, he’s on top of the world, and he’s in love with his best friend.

He’s seventeen, he’s on top of the world, he’s in love with his best friend, and he only realizes the drugs he’d taken were not the ones he’s familiar with after he stops feeling good and starts to feel really, really bad.

He’s on the floor of his hotel room the night before the NHL draft and he tries to call Jack as his vision starts to dim, but he blacks out before the call goes through.

He’s seventeen and he can hear the steady beep of the heart monitor as he surfaces from the pitch-black nothingness he’d been in for an indeterminable amount of time.

“Where am I?” he rasps, his throat raw.

His mother stirs from where she’s sitting in the uncomfortable hospital chair, dressed in her work uniform. It’s rumpled, like she’s been wearing it for too long.

“You’re in the hospital, Kent,” she tells him, stoically. “The doctors say you overdosed on pills.”

“I didn’t…” Kent starts, but he trails off.

 _I didn’t mean to_ , is what he was about to say, but what would his ultra-conservative mother think about that? He could already imagine the argument that would start, how she would say it didn’t matter his intention, all that mattered was it happened. His head hurts just thinking about it.

“The Draft?” he asks instead.

“The Draft was yesterday,” she tells him, still stoic but her eyes- the same eyes Kent sees when he looks in the mirror- soften incrementally.

Kent shudders and stifles a sob. Parsons weren’t supposed to cry, especially not the men. It was a sign of weakness.

“Ja—Jack?” he stutters, voice cracking in his effort to hold in the tears.

“He went first,” his mother tells him.

“Did he—has he come to see me?” he asks.

“He’s already in Vegas, Kenny,” she says with a sigh.

His doctor comes in to check on him then, gives him some ice chips and instructs a nurse push more pain meds through his IV. He falls asleep soon after. One fat tear escapes his eye as he drifts off.

When Kent wakes up next, he thinks he’s dreaming. Alicia Zimmermann sits in the chair his mother had occupied previously.

Where his mom had looked tired and overworked, Alicia is calm and collected.

She’s dressed casually in a t-shirt and jeans, but Kent knows from billeting with the Zimmermanns during the past few summers than everything she’s wearing is designer and tailored to her.

“Mrs. Z?” Kent says, coughing afterward. His throat is marginally less raw this time.

“Kenny!” she all but jumps up from the chair where she’d been reading a magazine and comes over to his side to give him a hug.

“Where’s my mom?” he asks her.

“She had to go back home,” Alicia tells him, rubbing his arm. “She took as much time off as she could.”

Kent can’t help the breakdown he has. He clings to Alicia and sobs and his throat gets more raw with every ragged breath he breathes in but he cannot make it stop. Alicia manages to climb onto the narrow hospital bed with him and holds him tight as he rides the waves of his emotions, talking soothing nonsense at him until his sobs have turned to whimpers and the occasional hiccup.

“What do I do?” he begs her for an answer.

“There’s an in-patient rehabilitation program I know of,” she begins, “they deal with a variety of issues and are very discrete.”

“I’m not an addict,” he tells her.

 _I’m not the one you should be worried about_ , he thinks, Jack’s face flashing through his mind. Kent was the one who kept track of Jack’s anxiety medication, who made sure he never took too much. Who is going to do that for him now?

Alicia starts to say something but he finds his words faster.

“I know how that sounds,” he tells her. “But I’m seriously not an addict. I’m not saying I’ve never done drugs before, but I researched the shit out of them before I did anything. Whatever I OD’d on, it wasn’t what I thought it was.”

“Alright,” she says after a moment. Kent knows Alicia, knows she probably doesn’t fully believe him. But she also knows him, knows his personality, his need for control. He wouldn’t just take something without knowing every potential side effect and risk.

“What… what is the story?” he asks. “About me, I mean. What does the hockey world think happened?”

“You pulled out of the draft the night before,” she tells him. “for personal reasons. Nobody knows it was medical. Well, there’s speculation about a number of things, but no one has any proof outside of your family and mine.”

“So what does that mean for me?” he asks quietly.

Her arm tightens around his shoulder momentarily, and she sighs.

“Hockey is not everything, Kent,” she says with conviction. “You need to know that.”

“Hockey is, was, my ticket out of the life I grew up in,” he counters. His eyes well with tears again. “You wouldn’t understand.”

It’s quiet for an unbearable minute and Kent panics when he thinks that Alicia might be getting ready to say goodbye.

“You don’t know much about my life before I was famous, do you?” she asks softly.

“No,” he admits. If he’s honest with himself, he hadn’t ever given it much thought.

“I have a background not much different that the life you’re trying to escape from,” she tells him. “I thought I’d never get away, but I did. You will too.

“You’re a smart boy, Kenny. You could do anything else, if you set your mind to it.”

“How did you get out?” he asks.

“I found Samwell,” she tells him, her eyes crinkle with the happy memories he’s sure she’s recalling.

She says ‘ _Samwell_ ’ like others say ‘ _religion_.’ It’s reverent.

Alicia tells Kent about how she was the first person in her family to even think of going to college. How her parents railed against her for daring to apply. How they told her that the twenty-five dollar application fee should have been used to buy groceries or pay down debts, regardless of the fact that it was money she’d earned herself working in the local grocery store after school and on weekends.

She tells him about how she’d finally felt a sense of belonging when she stepped onto the campus for the first time. She had picked Samwell from the brochures in the guidance counselor’s office because of its beautiful pictures and the “1-in-4, maybe more!” slogan on the back of the trifold.

“I just wanted to go somewhere where I could experience something _new_ ,” she tells Kent, stuck in her recollections. “I never could have dreamed how much it felt like… like the home I’d always wanted.”

Kent is still searching for that feeling. He thought getting drafted would give it to him, but he’d fucked that all up.

Alicia spends so long telling him about her life before—before she was discovered, before Bad Bob and her international supermodel career, before she was a renowned actress, before her philanthropic endeavors, before _Jack_ —that Kent is almost asleep again when she kisses his temple and moves to exit the bed.

“What do I do now?” he asks her sleepily.

“Whatever you dream of,” she tells him.


	2. Chapter 2

Ten months after his overdose, Kent wakes up to his alarm and rolls out of his too-small bed to stop the annoying, persistent beeping. He has an actual, real, alarm clock, courtesy of his landlord, Eleanor, a spitfire of a woman.

After he was discharged from the hospital, Kent had packed up his belongings and headed south. At first, he drove with no real destination in mind. As he continued south and saw signs for Boston, he realized he was probably subconsciously heading towards the place Alicia Zimmermann had described so reverently.

Eleanor was the first person to take a chance on him when he made it to Massachusetts. She had been widowed some thirty years prior and was known around Samwell for her willingness to help at-risk youth. 

After a week of sleeping in his car and taking meals at a church kitchen to preserve what little money he had, meeting Eleanor felt like a message from the universe telling him he was where he was supposed to be.

She rented him a small over-the-garage efficiency apartment at an obscenely low rate. It came furnished, as well, which saved Kent from sleeping on the floor. (An upgrade from the car, but not by much.) Eleanor even got him in touch with the manager of a local rink after she saw his hockey bag and skates, and Glen had offered him a job after their first meeting.

Kent’s morning routine is short. His apartment is so small that he can walk across it in four long strides, and he fills the kettle in the sink, setting it on the stove to heat as he continues on to the bathroom to quickly shower and get dressed.

He doesn’t know how she does it, but Eleanor always has a Tupperware full of warm eggs and bacon ready for him when he heads out to his old, barely running Jeep Cherokee to head to work, no matter the time of morning.

The rink Kent works at is small, but Glen the manager has done an amazing job keeping the schedule full. Kent runs the Zamboni and does general maintenance work throughout the day, coaches mites in the afternoons and on weekends, and works the front desk during free skates along with Stephanie, a sixteen year old figure skater.

Glen gave him the keys to the building not even two weeks after he’d started working and told him he had free reign of the building after hours to practice. He’d never asked Kent about the draft and Kent had hoped that maybe he didn’t recognize him, but he was expected to go first or second in the draft and those in the hockey world had to know of him to some degree.

Regardless, Glen kept his speculations to himself and trusted Kent to practice his shots and skate and use the small weight room by himself and didn’t seem to think Kent would be throwing crazy parties or vandalizing the place. Kent didn’t know anyone in Samwell, let alone have any friends to party with if he were so inclined. (He wasn’t inclined at all.)

Kent makes it to the rink with fifteen minutes to spare before Svetla starts her morning coaching session. He double checks the ice, which he’d gone over with the Zamboni the night before, is still in good condition before he settles down at the desk that functions as skate rental, cashier, and catch all.

The morning passes smoothly with a mix of private and group coaching sessions for figure skating, a small curling class, and some private skate time. Kent works SAT prep sets in between driving the Zamboni. He’d received his GED while in the Q, but college was never the plan originally.

Alicia had told him he could do whatever he wanted, and he realized that college felt like the next best thing. Now, it came down to a question of how to finance his education, if he could even get in to any place he applied. In his secret heart of hearts, he knew there was only one place he wanted to go.

His rink job wasn’t lucrative, but it did allow him enough money to pay his rent and keep food in his kitchen, gas in his car, and his phone on. He squirrelled away every penny he could, but saving is hard when there’s barely enough money to make ends meet as it is. One setback could empty his meager savings instantly.

Kent’s mind wanders as he works through his problem sets and answers phones and questions for the rink. He’s about to put his prep book away and get dressed for practice when Glen walks in with a man Kent has never seen before.

“Kent,” Glen reaches out to shake his hand as Kent stands up. “This is Coach Hall. He’s head coach over at the university and a friend of mine.”

 _The University_. Kent’s mind goes static for a few seconds before it reboots. He moves to shake the new man’s hand.

“Coach Hall, it’s nice to meet you,” he tells him.

“Nice to meet you, too, Kent,” Coach Hall says. “Glen says there’s a back room here where we can talk, if that’s alright with you.”

“Uh, sure,” Kent stutters. “Back this way.”

He leads Coach Hall around the front desk and behind the shelves of rental skates to a small break room slash equipment repair slash AV room. There’s a round café table with two chairs, and he motions Coach Hall to pick a seat.

The coach stares at him for a moment, assessing him silently. Kent knows these kinds of silences intimately. He learned to keep still early in his childhood when his father stared him down—it was the best way to keep from getting hit: keep still, keep quiet, keep your eyes trained on him but your face blank. Figure out what he wanted so you knew how to react.

“Kent,” Coach Hall breaks the silence after a minute. He leans forward, elbows on the table, hands clasped together. “I’m gonna be honest with you: I don’t know what you’re doing here.”

“Uh,” Kent starts, taken aback. “I’m working?”

“By all accounts, you should be up in Montreal or over in Vegas instead of here,” Coach Hall continues. Kent flinches minutely at the reminder, but resets quickly into what Jack used to call his media persona.

“I felt like I needed a change of scenery,” he smiles, leaning back on the plastic chair he’s seated in.

Coach Hall looks at him a moment longer before he speaks again.

“I know who you are, Kent Parson,” he tells him. “I know the talent you have. Glen tells me about this kid who works harder than any other kid he’s ever employed and I find out it’s Kent Parson?” he whistles. “I say I’ve gotta come meet the kid.”

Kent feels his cheeks heat up slightly at the second-hand praise.

“What I don’t understand,” Coach Hall continues, “is why you aren’t in the NHL right now.”

Kent opens his mouth to say… he doesn’t even know what he _would_ say, but it doesn’t matter because the man across from him continues his speech like he’s planned it out. Maybe he has.

“I’m not going to ask why you pulled out of the Draft, or how you managed to end up down here in sleepy Samwell. You could spend the rest of your life coaching mites and managing a rink, and I bet you’d be really good at it. But I also saw your SAT prep book when I came in, and it looks like you might be interested in something more.”

“I—“ Kent begins, mouth gaping like a fish. His world feels like it’s tilted on an axis. Could life be this easy?

“We just finished up our season,” Coach Hall tells him. “We’re looking forward to the next season. I’d like you to be a part of it. I just need to know that the reason you pulled out of the draft—and like I said, I don’t need details—I just need to know that it won’t affect you or the team.”

“It won’t, sir,” Kent promises. “What do I need to do to be considered?”


	3. Part Three

If someone were to ask Kent Parson what he thought heaven looked like, he’d say it looks a lot like Samwell University.

He wasn’t sure if the feeling of absolute rightness he’d experienced when he walked the campus for the first time was universally felt by all who came to this little pocket of Massachusetts, or if it was reserved for those who desperately needed to belong _somewhere_ , but he felt it in his bones.

It’s been three weeks since Coach Hall approached him at the rink. He’s on campus to meet with an admissions counselor and double check that he meets all of the requirements for attendance. He thought his SAT went well last weekend, and he’s turned in his application and certificate of completion for his GED already, but this is an opportunity that he can’t afford to lose because of a lack of proper documentation or some other such thing.

A blonde woman waves to him from across the quad. He’d called Alicia as soon as he returned to his apartment after meeting Coach Hall and she had talked him through a panic attack just the same way he used to work Jack through them.

“It’s too much,” he’d told her through the phone, his breathing rough and choppy. “I don’t deserve it, I—“

“Kent Victor Parson,” Alicia had pulled out the middle name in an attempt to halt the runaway train that was his mind. “You _do_ deserve this. These things don’t just happen. You put in the work, and the universe has rewarded you. Now breathe… in for three, out for three…”

She had talked him off the ledge and promised to meet him on campus when he had his tour. Now she welcomes him in with a hug as he approaches the columned administration building. She asks how he’s been as if they didn’t keep in contact every week or so—more so recently since his meeting with Coach Hall.

He’s felt so alone these past eleven months. He’s had no contact with his mother (and definitely not with his father) since she left him in the hospital. He’d tried calling Jack, but he never answered and eventually Kent gave up; it was too painful to listen to the generic voicemail greeting and he’d run out of words to say.

“I’m sorry,” he’d cried into the phone the first time, when he felt that Jack might actually pick up or call him back. “I know we were supposed to do this together. Please call me back. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

He never got an answer. Jack was now in playoff contention with the Aces. It hurt to see him on TV, to read articles about him, to watch his post-game interviews. He had a charisma now that he didn’t have before and Kent wanted—no, _needed_ —to know where this change came from. Alicia avoided talking about Jack to him. He was grateful to her and hated her a little bit for it at the same time.

“Kent!” Alicia grabs his arm as he approaches, pulling him out of his head and into her embrace.

When the hug ends, Alicia introduces him to Angela Reimer, the admissions counselor for the athletics department and – apparently—and old schoolmate of Alicia’s. She sits with Kent through his meeting like a proud mother, and Kent breathes a sigh of relief when Mrs. Reimer tells him his paperwork and test scores are all in order.

“Welcome to the class of 2015!” she tells him.

Kent can’t believe his luck. Alicia, he knows, would tell him it’s not luck (or not _just_ luck) that got him to this point. He is going to college, on scholarship, to play hockey, at _Samwell_.

_/ \\_

The rest of the summer seems to fly by. The Aces win the Stanley Cup. Kent watches the clip of Jack hoisting the trophy high overhead too many times to count. His smile is blinding. His eyes are so blue. He looks so _happy_.

The anniversary of his overdose comes and goes. He turns nineteen on the fourth of July. Eleanor bakes him a cake. When he asks her how she knew it was his birthday, she refuses to tell.

Kent moves out of the small apartment on a Tuesday the last week in July. The hockey team starts practice in a week and Coach Hall has required all incoming freshmen to be in the dorms ahead of that time so they can get settled.

Kent cries like a baby when he brings out the last box. He still doesn’t have much stuff beyond his hockey bag, a small amount of clothes, and his old laptop, but Eleanor has been sneakily adding to his collection of essential items over the last year. He now has an honest to god breakfast machine that can brew coffee, cook eggs and bacon, and toast bread all at the same time.

Before he leaves, he gives Eleanor one last, fierce hug.

“I’m just across the river,” she reminds him gently, “not on the moon. Our weekly dinners are still on, too, young man. Don’t you forget!”

Kent laughs wetly and pulls back to give her a kiss on one wrinkled cheek. She’s been such a solid maternal presence in his life this past year. He doesn’t know how he can ever repay her.

He climbs into his Jeep and dries his eyes in the rearview mirror. He’s about to drive away when Eleanor knocks on the window and motions for him to roll it down.

“I almost forgot, Kenny,” she says, handing him a thick envelope.

“What is this?” he asks her.

“It’s your rent, sweetheart,” she tells him. “I’ve been saving it for when you got back on your feet.”

“I can’t possibly take this,” he tells her, pushing the envelope of cash back towards her.

“You can and you will,” she tells him, her tone brokering no argument.

“I—thank you,” he says simply.

Eleanor smiles and pats his hand. “Remember, weekly dinners! I didn’t teach you to cook for no reason, after all!”

Kent laughs and happy tears leak from his eyes. He wipes them away as he puts the Jeep in reverse and backs down the driveway.

_/ \\_

All of Kent’s belongings fit in one industrial-sized laundry bin that Samwell University lends to students for move in. He makes it through the dorm check in with little fanfare, grabs his key from the RA, and pushes his bin toward the elevator doors.

His room is at the end of the hall, a little ways away from the noise of the floor lounge, stairwell, and elevator landing. The dark wood door has two signs taped to it: little anthropomorphic wells holding signs that say K. Parson and B. Knight respectively.

When he opens the door, he notices that his roommate isn’t moved in yet. The room is about the size of his efficiency apartment and holds two twin beds, two desks, a fridge/microwave combo, two sets of drawers, and a sink. He’d passed a sign for the floor bathroom on his way down the hall. Kent rolls his bin into the room, propping the door open with it and sets to looking about some more.

The room is long and narrow and the twin sets of furniture are currently set up mirroring each other on each long wall, with a tall window in between. There’s not many ways to arrange the furniture, but Kent will need room for his hockey bag. He decides to raise the bed as high as it will go without going to get the loft kit the RA mentioned was available. The drawers he claims tuck neatly under the bed and there’s enough space left over for his hockey bag and a set of plastic drawers Eleanor gave him to hold food, plates, and other essential items.

He’s putting the last of his collection of thrift store flannels into the small closet, music playing softly from his phone, when someone knocks on the open door.

“Hey brah,” the boy says in a thick Boston accent as he moves into the room pulling his own industrial bin behind him. “Shitty.”

Kent sees a hockey bag at the top of the newcomer’s bin and breathes a sigh of relief.

“Parse,” Kent replies, moving to shake his new roommate’s hand. Shitty pulls him in for a deep hug instead.

“Where’d your nickname come from, Shitty?” Kent chirps, pointing to the door. “I thought I was rooming with a B. Knight.”

“It’s an improvement over my given name,” Shitty smiles. “Super WASPy. Never wanna hear it again.”

“Br—“ a woman’s voice starts to call from the hallway.

“Ma!” Shitty stops her. “Anything but the name—call me anything but that name!”

Shitty’s mom acquiesces to his request and refers to him by increasingly embarrassing pet names while they unpack Shitty’s side of the room. Kent finds it hilarious, but it also scratches at his heart. He wishes he had a relationship like theirs with someone he loves. He excuses himself for a bit to return his empty cart and collect himself.

When he returns, Shitty’s mom is getting ready to leave.

“It was so nice to meet you,” she tells Kent. “I hope you and my son get along well and help each other out this year.”

After she leaves, it’s quiet in the dorm room for a moment. Kent squats down to his bottom drawer to put away the last of his clothes while Shitty fumbles around on his side of the room.

“What do you think about casual nudity?” Shitty asks, apropos of nothing.

When Kent turns his head, he gets a clear view of Shitty’s _very_ white ass and can’t help the snort that escapes him.

“I’m not really bothered by it, man,” he laughs, “but if you want to fuck me you gotta buy me a drink first.”

His eyes widen as his mouth shuts and he starts to sweat as the adrenaline kicks in immediately. He didn’t mean to say that out loud. No one knows. No one is ever supposed to know that Kent is anything less than one hundred percent straight. He mentally corrects himself: Alicia knows, Jack knows for obvious reasons, he’s sure there was speculation in the Q about how close he and Jack were, but they were so careful, only stealing kisses and doing more when they were absolutely sure no one could catch them.

“Noted, man,” Shitty stops his spiraling thoughts. “That feels like a third date kinda conversation to me.”

Kent can’t help the laugh that bubbles out of him. He’s able to rein it in after a moment or two as he calms down. His heart is still racing.

“I’ve, uh, I’ve never told anyone that before. I didn’t mean to, uh…” he trails off.

“Hey man, I appreciate that you felt like you could trust me with it,” Shitty says earnestly.

He throws on some boxer briefs and jumps on his bed, which he’s raised to the same level as Kent’s own. Kent crawls into his own bed and he and Shitty stare at each other across the room for a bit before Kent breaks the eye contact.

“Just, don’t tell anyone, okay?” Kent asks.

“There’s nothing wrong with you, Parse,” Shitty tells him, and his words have so much conviction in them that Kent looks back up. “But I also need you to know that your secret is safe with me. Bros don’t gossip about their bros.”

Kent laughs again, relieved. Kent thinks living with Shitty will work out just fine.

Three days after move in, Kent and Shitty are coming back from a morning run around campus with the RA at the front desk stops them.

“Kent Parson?” she asks.

“That’s me,” Kent confirms.

“A package arrived for you this morning. I just need you to sign for it and it’s yours.”

Kent signs the proffered paper form and accepts the cardboard box, looking at it curiously and he and Shitty continue up the stairs to their room.

When he opens the package in their room, Kent’s confusion over who sent the package clears. Sitting atop some high-end toiletries, a package of macrons, and a few new shirts is a framed picture of Kent and Alicia.

She’s sent a note as well, one that congratulates him for becoming a Wellie and joining such prestigious alumni as herself. Kent can hear her joking voice in his head as if she were next to him and smiles.

Shitty whistles as he looks over Kent’s shoulder.

“Is that Alicia Zimmermann??” he asks, eyeing the photo.

“Yeah,” Kent replies. “I billeted with them during summers in the Q.”

“That’s a nice care package for just some billet mom to send you, brah,” Shitty notes.

Kent doesn’t want to out Jack—doesn’t want to even think about Jack, but it’s too late for that—so he settles for a partial truth.

“I, uh, don’t have the best home life?” He tells Shitty. “She’s sort of like my surrogate mom.”

Kent can’t stop staring at the picture. It’s from after the won the Q. The photograph has been carefully cropped so it’s just of the two blondes, but Kent knows that the full shot was of Bob, Jack, Alicia, and Kent.

No one would be able to tell from this angle, but Jack’s arm was around his mother’s back, his hand skimming the small of Kent’s back where his sweater had ridden up a bit. Kent can feel the ghost of Jack’s hand on him now, and he sets the photo down to try and distract himself with something else.

He eyes the class schedule and lines it up with his practice calendar, both of which he’d received earlier in the morning before his run. Kent busies himself with figuring out when he can plan to study and when he can drive over to the rink and put in a couple hours of work. He may be on scholarship, but he still has to pay for books and other stuff out of pocket.


	4. Part Four

When Kent meets the rest of the team at their first practice, it goes about as well as he could expect. Most of the guys want to talk about Jack. Kent has prepared himself for this eventuality, but it still feels like it takes a monumental amount of effort to maintain his media persona to these strangers with their increasingly invasive questions.

Shitty is an angel and notices when Kent is getting overwhelmed. He hasn’t asked Kent what he and Jack were to each other, and Kent hasn’t offered up the information—he’s only known the guy for a week, and even though he considers him a close friend already, he’s not ready for that yet.

So Shitty starts to troll the shit out of any guy who asks Kent a question about Jack which, again, is most of them because Jack just won the Cup and the Calder and there’s speculation that he’s going to get the C next season based on his performance.

A sophomore goalie, Johnson, Kent recalls from his quick perusal of the roster, says something about how he thinks things will play out in this timeline. It catches Kent off guard, but then the coaches blow the whistle to get practice started and it fades from his radar. Goalies are weird, anyway.

Practice goes well. Coach Hall and his assistant, Coach Murray, play with the lines to get a feel for who works best together, and they run drills and do some conditioning before doing a three-on-three game to close things out.

Kent and Shitty hit up the food hall with some of the other team members after they shower up and the subject once again turns to Jack.

“So what’s it like to see your teammate win the cup his rookie year?” one of the upperclassmen asks.

Kent pauses, fork raised halfway to his mouth. He sets the fork down, breathes deeply through his nose.

“He deserves it,” Kent tells them. “He works harder than anyone I’ve ever met. I’m happy for him.”

Shitty draws the attention to himself and the conversation slides a different direction. Kent makes an excuse about leaving laundry in the dorm washer and makes his escape soon after.

_/ \\_

The school year starts and Kent feels amazing. His classes are varying levels of hard, but they’re all rewarding. He’s doing well in practices. His first round of tests come and go and he breathes a sigh of relief when all of his grades come in.

Before, in the Q, hockey was everything. School was just something he did to get through to the next practice, next game. He obtained his GED at fifteen so that he could devote more time to studying tape and plays and it paid off in wins, but now? Hockey is still important, obviously. It’s the reason he’s at Samwell on scholarship. But he doesn’t just want hockey now. He wants more, and the challenge of his schoolwork is just as exciting as deciphering plays on tape and figuring out a plan of attack.

Kent finds, to his surprise, that he is really into his math class. He guesses it makes sense; he’s always been good with numbers and memorizing stats for himself and his opposition. His professor recommends that he try a few other courses and then blindsides him with the question of his major.

“I haven’t picked a major yet,” he responds. “I’m just a freshman.”

“It’s never too early to start working towards your goals, Kent,” she tells him. “You have a knack for this, and you seem to be having fun. It’s just worth looking in to. You can do a lot of things with an applied mathematics degree. You’ve got options.”

_/ \\_

Hockey season starts strongly and Kent feels like he’s really hitting his stride. He’s on first line and racking up points left and right. He plays well with his line, and his shots hit were he wants them to nine times out of ten. He feels good.

Some of the upperclassmen live in a run down house on frat row they call the Haus. After the first home game of the season, Shitty and Kent are abducted from their dorm room and go through a ridiculous hazing ritual, which consists of getting them drunk and mostly naked in the basement, and them having to find their way upstairs to the party through an obstacle course of boxes, bikes, and whatever else was stored down there.

Kent makes it out first to a chorus of wolf whistles and is given back his clothes. He drinks, but doesn’t allow himself to get drunk; he steers well clear of the dubiously named tub juice that two of the guys are passing out to anyone who wanders nearby.

It’s good, he thinks: his life right now. He’s got his school and his team. He’s got his weekly dinners with Eleanor and his job at the rink. He’s got Shitty who is a genuine best friend to him and more open than Jack ever was.

He still feels his stomach clench when he thinks of Jack or when someone mentions his name or he sees his highlights on ESPN, but maybe it hurts less than it did a year ago? Kent’s not sure, but he’s going to keep telling himself that until it becomes true.

Kent stays in the dorms over Christmas break. He receives another care package from Alicia, this time full of little trinkets, more toiletries, a nice sweater, and his favorite candies. He thinks about calling her on Christmas day, but then he realizes that she’s most likely with her son. He sends her a text but doesn’t expect a response. She replies late in the evening, wishing him a Merry Christmas.

The new semester starts and hockey continues and Kent starts to wonder about what happens when Spring semester is over. Eleanor has taken on a new tenant. Jace was kicked out of his home when he started transitioning, and Eleanor picked him up almost immediately.

Kent has a mild panic attack when he thinks about if he will he be allowed to stay in the dorms if he takes classes over the summer. Will taking classes force him to graduate faster? Does his scholarship even cover summer school?

He schedules an appointment with Mrs. Reimer and she tells him that his scholarship does not cover summer housing or classes. Kent stresses about his living arrangements until one of the graduating seniors, Caper, mentions his dibs over team breakfast. Kent decides he will do almost anything to get that room. He decides to start fixing all the shit he’s noticed that’s rundown in the Haus. He’s fairly handy, but anything more than simple repairs is beyond his expertise.

Kent starts by replacing all of the busted light bulbs and deep cleaning the nasty green couch. It ends up being marginally less nasty, but the improvement catches Caper’s notice and after that he gives Kent a list of things he can do to earn his dibs. Kent completes the list in record time and Caper gives him his dibs before hockey season is even over. Kent breathes a sigh of relief for the moment.

Caper, with his newfound awareness of Kent, decides to set up his date for the Spring Crush dance. Kent meets Camilla the weekend before Spring C and she’s nice. She plays tennis with Caper’s girlfriend, and when they sit next to each other as they grab coffee in the cafeteria, someone mistakes them for siblings.

Kent laughs and makes a joke, Camilla smiles back at him. They have a good conversation, but as their pseudo-date wraps up, she leans over to whisper in his ear.

“You’re sweet and all,” she tells him, voice low in his ear, “but I’m pretty sure I’m a lesbian. I’m not out yet, but yeah.”

Kent chokes on the liquid he’d been attempting to swallow and has to put his hand over his mouth to keep from spewing coffee all over the place. When he regains his composure, he looks at her and smiles, trying to embody Shitty’s earnest demeanor when he replies.

“Thank you for trusting me with that,” he tells her. “Does that mean you have another date in mind for Spring C?”

“No date in mind,” she tells him. “It’s all still pretty new to me. Could we go to the dance as friends?”

“It would be my pleasure,” Kent tells her earnestly.

They exchange numbers and go their separate ways- Kent to the gym, and Camilla to practice.

The dance the following week is more fun that Kent realized it would be. He’d never been to a dance before, since as soon as his coaches and parents realized he had a talent for hockey, he was put on a fast track for training and development. In Oceanic, he studied with a tutor along with some of the other boys on his team for a couple hours a day. Everything else was hockey.

Kent and Camilla have a good time. Kent even maybe sort of plays wingman for his date when he convinces her to go dance with the cute brunette rugby player that hasn’t stopped staring at Camilla since she came in on Kent’s arm.

It’s half past midnight, and the Haus becomes the impromptu afterparty venue when Spring C winds down. Kent and Shitty head over to frat row with some of their teammates. Music and tub juice flow freely. Kent is running the beer pong table, a talent he didn’t know he had before college, and his ability to continuously sink his shots means he only has a slight buzz when he thinks he’s surely hallucinating.

He calls Shitty to take over for him and follows the phantom figure that had headed back towards the stairs. Kent lifts the caution tape off the bannister where it was doing a poor job of keeping the revelers from the upper level.

The music is quieter up on the second floor and he calls the name out in a voice barely above a whisper.

“Zimms?”

Jack stands in the door of the hall bathroom, hands in his front pockets, ball cap down low over his ice blue eyes. He looks good, Kent thinks, but of course he does.

“Hey Kenny, miss me?”


	5. Part Five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Brief hook up with Jack before we go back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Kent stands on the landing and the floor feels unsteady. He leans a hand against the wall and wills his heart to calm but it’s rushing with adrenaline and _hope_ and—

“What are you doing here, Zimms?” he asks.

“Maman mentioned you were here over Christmas,” Jack tells him.

“O—okay,” Kent says slowly, “but why are you here?”

“I’m in town for the weekend,” Jack says.

“Yeah, you played the Bruins tonight, I know, but what are you _here_?”

Kent has to know.

Jack pulls his hands out of his pockets and crosses the small distance between him and Kent.

_He’s grown_ _taller_ , Kent thinks right before Jack pulls him into a rough kiss that knocks Jack’s hat askew.

It’s been almost two years since he’s seen Jack, since he’s _heard_ from him. Kent clings to him and kisses back, deepening the kiss the way he remembers Jack likes.

Jack groans into his mouth and pushes their hips together. Kent can feel Jack’s arousal growing stronger. Kent’s own dick is so hard already—a Pavlovian response from all of the times they’d had to rush to keep from being caught.

Kent breaks the kiss and turns around, grabbing Jack’s wrist and pulling him down the hall to find an unlocked door. The Hausmates are smarter than Kent gives them credit for, however; all of the bedroom doors are locked. He quickly pulls Jack back into the small bathroom he’d been in before Kent found him and shuts the door behind them.

Jack pushes Kent up against the closed door and kisses him hard, nipping and sucking, hands in Kent’s unruly blonde hair.

“You look fucking hot, Kenny,” Jack tells him when Kent pulls off to gulp in a lungful of air.

Kent realizes he’s still mostly dressed up from the dance, with his white button down and blue slacks. His tie and jacket had been set aside carefully when he started playing beer pong, and a few of his top buttons had come undone when the heat of the party got to be a little too much.

Jack couldn’t be dressed more differently, in his casual (but designer) t-shirt and jeans that looked like they were made for him. _They probably were_ , Kent thinks, and chuckles.

“What?” Jack asks.

“Your ass looks fantastic, Zimms,” he tells him honestly. “I wanna get my hands on it.”

Jack looks down at Kent – he must have five inches on him now – and smirks the cocky way Kent’s seen him do for the cameras and in his spread for The Body Issue. Kent _does_ want to know where he learned that, how he became this version of Jack that is so different from the anxious, unsure seventeen year old he knew, but when Jack pops the top button of his button fly, Kent’s mind refocuses to the now.

“Can I?” Kent asks, motioning to Jack’s fly.

Jack nods. Kent pops open the rest of the buttons quickly and starts to tug Jack’s jeans and boxer briefs down his legs just enough to get to his hard cock.

It’s a little awkward in the small space of the bathroom, but Kent manages to get to his knees and pull Jack into his mouth and Kent… Kent _loves_ the feeling of giving Jack head. He loves the feel, the weight of Jack’s cock in his mouth, loves the sounds Jack makes that tell Kent he’s doing good, loves pushing himself by taking in as much as he can before he chokes.

Jack is the only guy Kent has given head to—the only guy Kent’s had any kind of sex with, period—and it’s been _so long_ and Kent has missed Jack, has missed _this_. He thinks that maybe if he can make Jack see stars that he might be able to make Jack understand just how much he’s missed him, how much he still loves him.

Jack’s hips begin to stutter, signaling just how close to the edge he is. Kent redoubles his efforts, sucking hard at the head of Jack’s dick and pumping his length until Jack explodes in his mouth. The shitty laminate counter of the sink Jack’s leaning against creaks as Jack grips the edge hard enough that his knuckles turn white, but he stays silent through his orgasm, just like he did when they were younger.

Kent swallows everything down and wipes his mouth of with the back of his hand after he pulls off. He moves to stand up, ready for his own release that feels so close to the surface already, when someone knocks against the unlocked door. Kent’s position, one knee still on the hard tile floor, hand braced against the door to stand up, is the only thing that keeps whoever is on the other side from walking in on the two men.

Jack’s eyes widen in shock, as if he just now remembered that he was Jack Zimmermann, hockey star. Kent watches the change come over his face as Jack shutters his emotions and embodies the hockey robot he used to be.

The partygoer on the other side of the door tries to open it one more time before Kent hears them clomp back down the stairs, presumably to find somewhere else to vomit.

“I need to go,” Jack says, tucking himself back into his pants and buttoning his jeans back up.

Kent stands up fully and Jack pulls his hat down low as he opens the door and descends the stairs quickly, making for the exit. Kent follows him down and tries to run after him, but the crowd subconsciously parts for Jack and engulfs Kent and Jack is out the front door and into the night before Kent can make it across the living room.

He doesn’t yell Jack’s name, even though he wants to. He can’t risk making a scene, exposing Jack. By the time Kent makes it to the front porch, Jack is gone. Kent slumps against the rough brick exterior, his skin feverish against the cool of the night.

Shitty puts a warm hand on his shoulder. He smells like weed and beer, and his own dress shirt had escaped his body much earlier in the night. Kent knows he’s crying, can feel the tears stream down his cheeks. Shitty pulls him into his arms and doesn’t ask Kent about why he’s crying or who he probably saw leaving the Haus in such a rush.

“Let’s go home,” Shitty says instead, and grabs Kent’s hand to pull him down the porch steps and in the direction of their dorm.

Kent falls into his bed twenty minutes later with swollen eyes, his throat tight with emotion.

“Shitty?” Kent asks after they’re both in bed.

“Yeah, Parse?” Shitty replies.

“Can you…” he breaks off. “Would you… I don’t want to sleep alone.”

Shitty rolls off his bed and bundles into Kent’s. The twin bed is not made for two mostly grown boys, but Shitty pulls Kent’s back tight to his front and wraps an arm around his stomach.

The warmth and solid presence of Shitty feels comforting in a completely platonic way.

“I hope you’re wearing underwear,” Kent chirps weakly.

“Just for you, Kenny, just for you.”

_/ \\_

Kent wakes up the next morning wondering if he’d dreamt seeing Jack again. Shitty’s soft snoring in Kent’s ear grounds him in reality.

_So,_ Kent thinks to himself as he disentangles his legs from the sheets and hops onto the floor, _that_ really _happened_.

He runs through his Sunday morning routine – shower, grab Shitty for a quick run and breakfast, read ahead for his upcoming lectures – and all the while, Jack sits like a specter in the back of his mind.

He can’t call him yet; it’s too soon, he’d look desperate. It’s a travel day for Jack, anyway, better to send a text that he can get when he’s back in Vegas.

Kent types out four different drafts before he settles on “It was good to see you again.” He hits send before he can change his mind and spend another half hour trying to find the best combination of words.

Shitty catches him Sunday afternoon.

“Hey brah, Coach Hall wants us to give a tour to a group of high school seniors that are interested in Samwell, you down?”

Kent meets the small group at Faber and walks them around the facilities. He and Shitty trade off talking about the team stats and what practices are like.

“You’re on a point streak right now, right, Parse?” a tall D-man with an angular face and bright brown eyes speaks up from the tour group.

“Just a little one,” Kent answers modestly, smiling. “I couldn’t do it without my linemen helping. Coach Hall and Coach Murray really work on our lines a lot in preseason and they look at more than just stats when choosing them. It’s great to have such good chemistry with my lineys.”

“Nothing like playing with Jack Zimmermann, I bet,” says one of the guys lowly.

Shitty looks at him, gauging his reaction. He’s right to be concerned. If this tour had happened last week, Kent might have clammed up. This week, however, Kent had reconnected with Jack. Jack had come to _him_. And, sure, he’d left quickly, but it’s not like Jack would have wanted to out himself.

“Every line is different,” Kent says after a moment of thought. “Jack is… amazing… and so talented. It’s different now, but it’s good. Our team is doing amazing. We are keeping our fingers crossed for the Frozen Four.”

The tour comes to an end soon after, and Kent and Shitty hang out with a few hangers on as they wait on their rides to take them back home. He sees the D-man from earlier – Oluransi, he recalls – talking with an equally tall kid with blonde hair and striking blue eyes. The chemistry is there, he thinks, and hopes that they both decide to come to Samwell next year.

When they return to their dorm room, Shitty sighs.

“I’m not gonna push you,” he begins, “but if you want to unpack what happened last night, I’ve been told I’m a good listener.”

“I can’t—“ Kent begins. “It’s not—I’ve never...”

“How about I pretend I didn’t recognize the dude who shot out of the Haus light he was on fire moments before you ran onto the porch crying?” Shitty suggests. “Let’s call him Chad.”

Kent laughs. Shitty had been partnered up with a guy named Chad, who played lacrosse, for a project fall semester. Chad unequivocally sucked and stuck Shitty with all of the work, and Shitty had unilaterally decided that lacrosse bros were not to be trusted.

“Not Chad,” Kent insists. “Laurent.”

“Okay then, Laurent.”

“He, uh,” Kent begins, trying to organize his thoughts. He trusts Shitty to listen to what he has to say and keep his secrets. “We used to date, sort of? It was all secret, of course. Can’t let your coaches in the Q know you’re queer and all that.

“When I overdosed, he stopped talking to me. But he was there last night and… and we hooked up, but then someone tried to open the door we were behind and he got spooked and ran.”

“And you and Laurent,” Shitty prompts after Kent falls silent for a little bit. “Was this a one-time thing, or…?”

“I don’t know,” Kent admits.

_/ \\_

Kent decides to call Jack’s phone Tuesday night. He hadn’t received a text back, but he’s guilty of looking at texts when he’s busy and making a mental note to reply before completely forgetting about it. The automated female voice speaks in French, but the tone is similar enough that Kent knows she’s saying the number is no longer in service.

His skin warms quickly as his heart rate increases. Kent tries not to let his mind jump to conclusions. Jack has been in Vegas for almost two years now, it would make sense for him to get a local number instead of his Canadian one.

He sends a text to Alicia: _did Jack get a new number?_

She responds a few minutes later: _not that I know of… why?_

Kent’s palms are sweaty.

His breaths come in quick and shallow.

He sits on the floor of his dorm as the panic grips him, barely noticing when the door opens and Shitty’s green eyes fill his field of vision.

Shitty talks him down, helps him breathe.

“I just, I just…” Kent come back into his body and hears his whispering voice repeating the phrase. “I don’t _understand_.”

He’s still shell shocked on Friday in the grocery checkout line when he sees the tabloid magazine with Jack’s face plastered on it.

_SILVER SCREEN STARLET NABS HOCKEY ROYALTY_ , _pg. 6_.

The cover shows three shots of Jack and model turned movie star Sophie Dauphine holding hands, getting lunch, kissing. Kent stares at the high gloss cover until the person behind him clears her throat.

He feels… hollow. Jack has been out of his life for nearly two years, so why does it hurt so bad that he feels like he can’t feel anything at all?

He grabs his basket of groceries from the conveyor belt and turns back towards the aisles, pulling a pint of ice cream from the freezer section. After he pays for his items, he returns to his dorm, pulls on an oversized hoodie, and dedicates himself to eating the entire pint of ice cream in one sitting, while watching Legally Blonde.

After the credits roll, Kent resolves to never let Jack Zimmermann make him feel this way again.


	6. Part Six

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay! My laptop bit the dust THE week of finals and I lost all of my documents. Finally got a new laptop though! This is a short chapter, but I should have more soon-ish.

Samwell Men’s Hockey enters playoff season in high spirits. Their lines are working well together, they’re executing play after play successfully. Kent shares his line with the team captain, a senior dubbed Thumper, who has seen how to use Kent’s speed and accuracy to its advantage.

They design a few plays that pit Kent against larger defensemen and rely on Kent out-skating them in order to keep Kent from getting checked into the sideboards. It works ninety-five percent of the time.

It helps that Kent has thrown himself even more into hockey. Shitty remarks at one point that he didn’t think that was a possibility, but since the incident with he-who-shall-not-be-named, if it doesn’t involve hockey or his schoolwork, Kent is emphatically uninterested.

They are one game away from the frozen four when Kent gets taken out by a Princeton goon. He doesn’t blame the guy for targeting him; he’d already scored two goals and was working on a hat trick when he’s slammed against the boards and he can feel his ankle pop.

The trainers say it’s a high sprain, which Kent knows can be worse than a break sometimes. He’s not allowed to skate for six weeks, and the walking boot he’s given throws him off balance, but he’s done hockey since he was three and this is not his first injury.

Unfortunately, Princeton wins the game after Kent is carted away to be looked at. Kent takes it hard. The game went to shootout to determine the winner, and he knows he could have brought the team the win if he was able.

The team’s end of season dinner comes with a surprise: Kent is unanimously voted captain for the next season. Well, he didn’t vote for himself, but apparently everyone else has enjoyed him enough to trust him with the captaincy.

He meets with Hall, Murray, and Thumper as Thumper passes the baton to him and they strategize for next season. Kent comes up with an off-season workout plan that the team can take home with them and immediately starts reviewing tape and thinking about lines and plays. He can’t wait to get the new frogs in to see how they mesh with the team.

Finals come quicker as spring slips into summer and Kent moves into the Haus after classes let out. Shitty helps him move his stuff into the upper floor. Caper leaves behind a bunch of furniture, including a queen-sized bed frame and mattress, a sturdy looking desk, and a wardrobe straight out of a Narnia book.

Shitty, after Kent’s stuff is all in his room if not in the right place yet, grabs a few lawn chairs from the front yard and proceeds back up the stairs and past Kent’s open door.

“What are you doing?” Kent wonders.

“The front porch roof is prime real estate for smoking,” Shitty proclaims.

“So you’re claiming that as your space then, yeah?” Kent chirps, arching an eyebrow.

“Yep!” Shitty replies, popping the ‘p.’

“You’re gonna fall off,” Kent tells him, but he climbs out of the hall window behind shitty and watches the sun set from the roof.

_/ \\_

He picks up more hours at the rink and takes a couple of basics classes at the local community college to save money. Living in the Haus is strange at first. There’s only one other guy there for the summer, and Jonesy’s room is on the first floor, so they don’t interact all that much but Kent starts a weekly dinner with his Hausmate that he hopes will build as the rest of the rooms fill up towards the fall.

Shitty visits halfway through the summer when Kent’s five-week classes end. Kent releases tension he didn’t know he was holding when his best friend pulls him into a huge bear hug and kisses him on the cheek. Shitty has grown the beginnings of a mustache in Kent’s absence and it tickles his cheek.

“Nice peach fuzz you got there,” Kent chirps. “How much are you charging for mustache rides?”

“All those who want to ride can ride for free, brah,” Shitty chirps back and winks, “all you have to do is ask me nicely.”

They’re still on the porch—it’s sagging but Kent has plans to reinforce it—when Kent hears a rustle and a teeny tiny “meow!”

Shitty and Kent both look to each other for a moment, wondering if each of them is hallucinating individually when the tiny “meow!” sounds again from under the porch’s floorboards.

Kent ends up belly down on the porch with his arm in the nebulous dark and moldy area underneath through a dangerously large section that had rotted away. He’s fishing for the kitten (kittens?) when the back of his hand meets fluffy fur.

Hoping it’s in fact a kitten and not a skunk or a raccoon or something, Kent gently grabs the little ball of fur and pulls it from the dark and into the light. He cradles the kitten close and it begins to purr.

Kent thinks it is supposed to be white, but the kitten is so covered in dirt and grime that he really can’t be sure. What he can see, clearly, are the kitten’s bright green eyes. Kent and Shitty take the kitten into the kitchen where Kent carefully washes it off with some dish soap. The kitten goes limp under the warm water and lets Kent scrub all of the dirt off.

He’s unsure of the Haus policy on pets, but he is equally sure that he’s keeping it. Kent and Shitty spend the rest of the afternoon taking the kitten to a veterinarian for a check up— the vet says the kitten is a girl, and she is about nine weeks old—and spending entirely too much money on supplies at the local pet store.

When they return to the Haus, they spend time setting up their purchased items: a litter box, cat tree, food and water bowls, and a bunch of enrichment toys.

“She looks like you if you were a cat,” Shitty notes as the sun sets and they’re playing chase the ball with her. “Green eyes and full of determination and claws.”

Kent laughs. “Kit Purrson.”

“Dude,” Shitty says solemnly. “Kit Purrson.”


	7. Part Seven

The rest of the summer flies by.

Kent works and works out (once he’s cleared by the trainer) and spends time with Kit.

Shitty visits three more times before he basically moves in for the last four weeks before he’s allowed to move into his dorm room. He sleeps in the unoccupied room that Kent’s room shares a bathroom with (although some nights they fall asleep together in Kent’s bed).

Marsh, who resides in the room during the school year, let him crash for the promise of Shitty’s – frankly boner-inducing—back massages whenever he wants. Shitty thinks that he can earn real dibs once Marsh moves out if he gives him enough. Planning for the future, he says.

At the first team practice of the fall semester, Kent’s focus is on how to best work in the new additions to the team. Oluransi and Berkholtz, dubbed Ransom and Holster by Shitty before they were even out of the locker room, work so well together that Coach Hall doesn’t even try them out with other lineys.

Kent keeps a critical eye on the team as they skate around, suggesting a change here and there and running shooting drills. They won’t have a game for another five weeks and there’s definitely room for improvement as the lines get used to the rearrangements, but Kent sees a lot of potential in this team.

After practice, Coach Hall pulls Kent aside and they chat a bit about how practice went. Kent shares his thoughts and Hall nods in agreement. Kent loves almost everything about hockey, but the strategy piece is among his favorite things. (His most favorite is the psychological game he gets to play when he chirps his opponents. He’s been known to dig deep into an opponent’s social media to get good dirt for chirps.)

“One more things, Kent,” Coach Hall says before they break to go their separate ways. “Elliot graduated early over the summer, so we are down a team manager. If you could keep your eye out for a suitable replacement, it would be much appreciated.”

Kent nods and heads off to meet Shitty at the cafeteria for breakfast before they head off to their gender and women’s studies class together. Shitty is taking it as a part of his newly declared poli-sci/gender studies double major and Kent thought it would make an interesting elective.

The lecture hall the class is in is big by Samwell standards, seating about fifty students. Kent and Shitty squeeze into the second row where two unoccupied seats sit next to each other with a few minutes to spare before the lecture begins.

Shitty strikes up a conversation with the girl sitting on his other side, a short Asian girl with long, straight black hair that hides half her face.

Larissa, who reveals her name with an eye roll but holds her fist up to bump against Shitty’s, then Kent’s, is a freshman. She’s a bit standoffish when Shitty asks about her major, but after a bit of conversation tells the boys that she wants to major in studio art, while her parents are pressuring her heavily into pre-law or pre-med.

“I feel that, brah,” Shitty tells her. “I’m double majoring to appease my asshole father.”

“They’re not assholes,” Larissa defends, “they’re immigrants who want their only child to be successful. It just hasn’t occurred to them that monetary success isn’t the only way to be successful.”

The professor starts her lecture soon after and their conversation dies down.

It takes approximately two more class periods and the syllabus week kegster for Kent to learn three things about Larissa: first, she’s scary competent. Her art, of which she’d shown some pictures on her phone to Kent when he asked before their second class, was incredible and she’d aced the pop quiz their professor had foisted upon them to see if they’d actually read the required reading.

Second, she can hang. Shitty invites her to the kegster when they depart from their Friday lecture and she’s in the haus for all of ten minutes before she’s doing a keg stand and making conversation with the upperclassmen.

Third, and most important for Kent’s current needs, she’s got a crazy ability to put the boys in line. When a space opens up on the beer pong table, Larissa and Shitty take their place against Marsh and Johnson. Kent thinks the game will end in defeat for his friends since Marshy practices ridiculous shots in his off time, but Larissa sinks every ball she throws before running the table for the next two hours and retiring victorious.

Kent, riding a warm buzz and attempting to pick his slack jaw up off the floor, walks over to where Larissa sits on a bar stool too tall for her feet to reach the ground, and makes his offer before he can rethink it.

“I need you to be my manager,” he tells her.

Larissa looks at him with her sharp eyes, analyzing.

“Your what?” She asks after a moment.

“The—the team’s—the hockey team is in need of a manager,” Kent finally gets the right words out. “I need you to be that person.”

“Why me?” she asks. Kent knows it’s a fair question.

“You’re cool, you mesh well with the boys, and you can keep them in line.”

She looks at him for a moment longer.

“I don’t know anything about hockey,” she tells him. “What does being the Samwell Men’s Hockey team manager entail?”

“You would be responsible for checking our equipment to make sure it’s not damaged and sending it to get repairs if it is,” Kent begins. “Also, you’d help keep stats during games, make sure the rink is set up properly before and after games and practices, and various other things. It’s a paying job, and not bad pay for part-time work.”

Larissa thinking over Kent’s words for a bit, long enough that Kent thinks he’s made a mistake in asking her this question at a kegster, or maybe even at all. He doesn’t want her to think that he doesn’t want to be her friend or was only talking to her to ask her to take the job.

“Send me the schedule,” she tells him. “I need to make sure it doesn’t conflict with my classes.”

Kent breathes a sigh of relief and bumps his fist with hers. “Sweet.”

_/ \\_

Larissa joins Kent and Shitty in their seats in the lecture hall on Tuesday and says “I’ll do it.”

Shitty looks at her with confusion, and Kent explains the question he’d posed to her over the weekend.

“Brah!” Shitty exclaims and gives her a high-five. “We are in serious need of someone with competence.”

Kent nods his agreement. Their last manager was just able to scrape by, but he knows Larissa will take control.

“There’s a pretty informal interview with the coaches,” he tells her. “Can you come to the rink this afternoon?”

“I’ve got art appreciation until 3:30,” Larissa tells him. “But after that, yeah.”

“Perfect. Text me when you get to the rink and I’ll take you to the office. It can get a little confusing in the labrynth.”

_/ \\_

Larissa makes it to the rink at five after four, and Kent guides her into the bowels of the rink.

“There’s more going on behind the scenes than I would have thought,” she muses.

Kent indicates the locker rooms, hockey equipment room, various store rooms, laundry facilities, and a break room with vending machines, a coffee maker, and microwave, before they reach the coaches’ offices at the end of the hall.

Coach Hall asks about her major and her previous work experience. Kent learns (but is unsurprised by it) that she helped run her parents’ restaurant while she was in high school and was responsible for making sure staff were on time and doing their work. She’d also hand-lettered all of the signs and menus.

Coach Hall goes over the responsibilities that Kent had outlined over the weekend with her in more detail and adds a few more that Kent forgot to mention. Larissa takes it all in stride and shakes hands with the coaches when they are done, smiling confidently.

“We have our next practice in the morning,” Coach Hall tells her as they are walking out. “Kent is our captain, so he will get you familiar with flow of things until you take the reins yourself. Any questions for us?”

“When do I get to drive the Zamboni?” Larissa jokes.

“Ah, you’ll have to ask Kent about that, too,” Coach Murray teases. “He grooms the ice before and after practice. Practically lives here sometimes. I’ve thought about putting a cot out for him in the break room.”

Kent flushes slightly at the chirp but takes it in stride.

“Zamboni is my religion,” he attests, hand over his heart.

_/ \\_

Larissa, dubbed Lardo by Ransom and Holster within five minutes of introducing her to the team, takes to managing the boys like she was made for it. Kent didn’t really think that there was any other option, but he was glad it was working out so well.

The year starts off strong. The team is really behind Kent as a captain, and he works himself harder to make sure he’s worthy of their confidence. Ransom and Holster are a fearsome pair of defensemen on Kent’s line, and they’ve been able to make some interesting plays with the dynamic.

Holster is incredibly creative, and Ransom has a mind for strategy. Some of the plays they come up with are too outlandish to work in a game setting, but most of them are sound and get worked into practices so they can be perfected.

Kent had secretly been worried that he and Shitty would drift apart without the convenience of living in the same room; their friendship remains strong, albeit with more trips to Annie’s, and Shitty spends at least 2 nights a week in Kent’s bed at the Haus.

It’s nice, Kent thinks, to have someone to share a bed with. He and Jack had never cuddled or slept over, always sneaking around and getting each other off as quickly as possible with the ever-looming threat of being caught hanging over their heads.

Lardo joins them for coffee at Annie’s after their gender studies class more often than not. Kent notices how doe-eyed Shitty gets around her, especially when she starts talking about her art.

The first game of the season is next week: a home opener against Brown. Kent freezes up in the locker room when he sees his jersey with the C on it. He’s never had the C before, always an A.

He briefly wonders about the other version of himself, the one that hadn’t overdosed, and whether he’d be sporting a letter on his jersey two years into his career. Kent shakes his head as if to physically derail that train of thought. He could get dragged down in the what-ifs or focus on the now. He chooses the latter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An update! I'm working on this when I can, but school is a necessary evil. Thanks for reading!


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